Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 26, 2018

11/26 Links Pt1: Netanyahu's Vision for the Middle East Has Come True; Kontorovich: Airbnb’s Anti-Israel Hypocrisy; Ottawa briefed on PA’s glorification of terrorism

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Airbnb’s Anti-Israel Hypocrisy

The tech company will operate anywhere and serve anyone—except Jews in the West Bank.

Two very different organizations took action last week against Jews owning property in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority sentenced two Palestinians to 15 years hard labor for selling land to Jews. And Airbnb, the tech behemoth and online marketplace for lodging, announced it would no longer serve Jewish communities in the West Bank. The two actions differ in brutality but are based on the same idea: Jews should have no home in the West Bank.

Under Airbnb’s policy, an American Jew with a rental property in the West Bank is barred from listing it for rent on the website. But an American Arab is welcome to list his home a few hundred meters away, even though the Palestinian law forbidding real-estate deals with Jews carries a maximum penalty of death. That openly racist policy doesn’t trigger Airbnb’s delisting policy.

Airbnb admits the West Bank is the site of complicated “historical disputes.” Until 1948, the West Bank was part of the League of Nations’ 1922 British Mandate for Palestine, created to become a “national home” for the Jewish people. In 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution suggesting the territory be divided into Arab and Jewish states, an idea the Arabs immediately shot down. Indeed, when the mandate ended and Israel declared independence in 1948, all its Arab neighbors invaded immediately. Jordan occupied the West Bank and massacred or expelled every Jew in the area, took their homes and destroyed their synagogues. Israel only regained the West Bank after Jordan foolishly attacked again in 1967. Many Jews then returned, including to lands Jews had purchased before Israeli independence.

Since then, the dispute has narrowed. Israel signed the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian leadership in 1993, leaving all settlements—the new and returning Jewish communities—under complete Israeli control. Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1994. To be sure, the Palestinians still demand the removal of Jews from the entire West Bank. But Airbnb’s policy applies only to the Israeli—primarily Jewish—communities in the disputed territories.

Israeli cities in the West Bank are open to any lawful resident of Israel, including Arabs. By contrast, any Jew who enters the West Bank’s Palestinian towns risks his life.

Click Twitter link for the full article:

Very important piece from @evkontorovich on @airbnb bigotry.
https://t.co/us9VesdXzy via @WSJOpinion
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) November 26, 2018

Airbnb, UNHRC boycott Israel yet ignore other disputed territories, report charges

An NGO published a report on Monday charging hypocrisy against boycotts of Israel in the aftermath of Airbnb’s boycott of Jewish West Bank settlements and with the UN Human Rights Council close to publishing a blacklist of companies that still do business there.

The report by Professor Eugene Kontorovich of the Kohelet Policy Forum said that “major American and European companies like Airbnb, Coca Cola, Ford and Caterpillar continue to legally do business in occupied territories worldwide without hinderance. That is because - except when `Israel is involved - no one believes such business is actually illegal.”

Regarding Airbnb, Kontorovich said that the company was now trying to get itself off of the UNHRC blacklist by boycotting Jewish West Bank settlements and there was a danger that other companies could follow suit. He added that it was unclear whether Airbnb would even succeed in getting itself taken off the list since it was not boycotting disputed areas of Jerusalem.

Deputy Minister of Diplomacy in the Prime Minister's Office, Michael Oren commended the “Who Else Profits II” report, stating, "This treatment isn't being handed out to any other country in the world, which means its inherently anti-semitic."

A past similar report by Kontorovich in summer 2017 alleged that the UN Human Rights Council was turning a blind eye to more than 40 European companies that operate in four other areas deemed occupied territory by the UN.

The other occupied areas listed by the reports are: Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and Russian-occupied portions of Ukraine.

The New Israel Fund encouraged the Airbnb boycott of Israel

The extremist American Jewish non-profit organization, The New Israel Fund (NIF) is yet again part and parcel of boycott efforts against the State of Israel. Along with its stated policy of endorsing a boycott against Israel, non-profit organizations financed by the NIF were integral to influencing Airbnb’s decision to remove listings for homes in “Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank.”

As a report by NGO Watch noted, “This change in policy was a clear result of a coordinated and well-financed campaign targeting the company by NGOs involved in BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns against Israel, led by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), in concert with the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), at least three Israeli groups, and the Palestinian Authority. The funders responsible for this campaign include a number of European governments as well as the US-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund.”

Who are these Israeli non-profits?

Kerem Navot co-authored a November 2018 report with Human Rights Watch, entitled “Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Land:

Tourist Rental Listings in West Bank Settlements” which alleges that that Airbnb (and Booking.com) “facilitat[e] Israel’s unlawful transfer of its citizens to the settlements.” Kerem Navot is funded by NIF, and the organizations leaders come from NIF backed organizations.

Who Profits posted a profile of Airbnb, listing its owners, investors, contact information, and details on “listings on Airbnb’s website …in … illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories.”

Airbnb was also featured in the NGO’s October 2017 report and accompanying political campaign, “Touring Israeli Settlements Business and Pleasure for the Economy of Occupation.”

A media outlet financed by NIF, +972 published an article “Airbnb lets you vacation in illegal West Bank Settlements,” which claimed discrimination alleging “thinly veiled discrimination along ethnic or national lines.”

Airbnb was wrong and its decision is racist and Anti-semitic.

In 1977, Jordan ratified the 1925 "Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare." But it added a curious and perhaps sickening reservation:

Reservation made on accession:

Accession by Jordan does not compel it to conclude with Israel any of the arrangements mentioned in the Protocol. Jordan commits itself to the respect of the obligations contained in the Protocol towards States which do likewise. Jordan undertakes no commitment toward States whose regular or irregular armed forces do not observe the provisions of the Protocol.

It sure sounds like Jordan was saying two things:

1) The Protocol is only between High Contracting Parties, and since it did not recognize Israel as one of them, it was not obligated to refrain from using poison gas or biological weapons against Israel.

2) If it accuses Israel of using such weapons, for example by claiming as Mahmoud Abbas once did that Israel might poison the water supply of Palestinians, then that is an additional reason why Jordan would claim to be justified in using poison gas against Israel.

A further question can be asked: since Jordan's peace treaty with Israel, does this reservation on the prohibition of poison gas still apply, or does Jordan have to explicitly remove it from the record? As of this time, Jordan's reservation is still documented by the ICRC without any further comment. And Jordan's reservation saying that it doesn't apply to Israel is not conditional.

So Jordan may believe it has the legal right to use chemical WMDs against Israel - today.

(h/t Irene)

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This morning there was a car ramming attack where a Palestinian ran his car into IDF soldiers, injuring three.

The driver was killed.

Al Resalah reports that the terrorist, Ramzi Adnan Abu Yabes, 32, was the head of the nursing department at the Arab Rehabilitation Society in Bethlehem.

This is not the first doctor or other medical professional involved in attacks against Israelis.

Medical professionals are taught the basic concept of "First, do no harm." Apparently there is a Palestinian exception to that rule.

UPDATE:

(h/t Renato)

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From Haaretz:

The United States Agency for International Development announced that half of its employees in the West Bank and Gaza will be let go in the coming weeks and by early 2019, the operations will be completely shut down.

The humanitarian agency is one of the largest and most important in the region.

The U.S. State Department informed USAID last week that by next month the agency would have to present a list of 60 percent of its employees to be dismissed as the first step in the shutdown that will be finalized by 2019.

The USAID chapter in the West Bank and Gaza began operating in 1994, focusing mainly on economic issues including water, infrastructure, education and health. USAID has invested about $5.5 billion in the West Bank and Gaza in the construction of roads, schools, clinics and community centers.

USAID also buys medical equipment, provides humanitarian assistance to those in need of medical care and teaches lifesaving techniques to doctors from Gaza and the West Bank via Israel and other countries. In recent years USAID has conducted in-service education for teachers, built schools and worked on projects to keep young Palestinians in the education system.

USAID has been fairly concerned in making sure that it does not fund any people or groups associated with terrorism. At the same time, it has not been effective in training ordinary Palestinians to abhor terror and to accept Israel. Palestinian thinkers have warned that USAID promotes "normalization" but the PA has pushed back heavily against any such initiatives.

USAID describes its purpose this way:

The purpose of foreign aid should be ending the need for its existence, and we provide development assistance to help partner countries on their own development journey to self-reliance – looking at ways to help lift lives, build communities, and establish self-sufficiency.

Our efforts are both from and for the American people.

USAID demonstrates America’s good will around the world; increases global stability by addressing the root causes of violence; opens new markets and generates opportunity for trade; creates innovative solutions for once unsolvable development challenges; saves lives; and advances democracy, governance, and peace.

By those standards, has USAID been successful in the territories?

Are Palestinians more pro-American? Clearly not.

Did USAID address root causes of anti-Israel violence? Clearly not.

Did it open new markets in the territories? If it did, those markets are minuscule.

Did it advance democracy? Certainly not.

Did it advance governance? It seems that on the contrary, the Palestinian leaders are now dependent on foreigners to build their governance structure, and after over 20 years, one would think they would be more self sufficient if these foreign teams from the US and EU really were teaching them how to be self-sufficient.

Did it advance peace? No, although it possibly kept the status quo.

The head of USAID once said “I believe the purpose of foreign assistance is to end the need for its existence.” By that measure, USAID has failed Palestinians, and withdrawing it should be to their benefit - they have the tools, they just choose not to use them.

There is a danger to Israel by the removal of USAID. Infrastructure projects are needed no matter who funds them and if there is no safe water, for example, Israel will end up being more involved in Palestinian affairs rather than disengaging from them.

Chances are pretty good that for the medium term, the EU will happily make up the shortfall from the absence of USAID. But that pushes the main problem off - if the purpose of this aid is to build self sufficiency, then the programs must have that goal in mind from the start, instead of creating a welfare society where Palestinians expect the West to do everything for them, as exists today.

It is absurd that so many years after Oslo the Palestinians have not learned to build their own institutions. Zionists in the 1920s and 1930s essentially built their state institutions without foreign assistance and they were ready in 1948 to govern themselves.

The world needs to look at exactly why "Palestine" has not progressed significantly in self-sufficiency since 1994.

it won't like the answer - that the "State of Palestine" is not meant to be a place for Palestinians to live safely and with dignity, and instead it has always meant to be a springboard to destroy Israel. Any aid they get towards that goal is welcome, and any aid they get that frustrates that goal is rejected.

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11/25 Links: Zionism Is About Letting Jews Live (And Die) Without Humiliation; Chabad Center Marking 10th Anniversary of Mumbai Attack; France gave 'sensitive' intel to Palestinians during Second Intifada

From Ian:

Zionism Is About Letting Jews Live (And Die) Without Humiliation

“Suppose the Exodus from Egypt had never occurred. Suppose the Romans never exiled the Jews. Suppose also that there had been no Jews in antiquity. Even then, the justification for establishing their nationhood in Israel would be valid along the lines I tried to explain in my article “From rabid Zionism to egalitarian Zionism” (November 9, 2018).

Shlomo Sand’s response to my arguments (“The twisted logic of the Jewish historic right to Israel,” November 16, 2018), misses that central point. In this sense he’s like Naftali Bennett. The education minister carries an ancient coin in his pocket in order to prove Jewish ownership of the land since antiquity. Sand’s understandable revulsion at the Jewish-national implications of Bennett’s version of nationalism, based on that coin, leads him to reject Zionism in its entirety.

The justification I tried to provide for this ideology frees us both from Bennett’s coin and from Sand’s contentions against it. It’s anchored not in the history of the Jews in antiquity, but rather in two pivotal facts regarding their history in modernity.

Fact 1: A major component of the Jews’ social profile in modernity, in their own eyes, and in the eyes of their surroundings, is that of group originating in Palestine in antiquity. It doesn’t take a historian to recognize this fact. Suffice it to read the Passover Haggadah, be a tourist in Florence or listen to the “Passions,” preferably Bach’s.” (h/t dov)

For the full article click via twitter:

Israel is important as an embodiment of Jewish self-rule not only for its own Jews, but for world Jewry as a whole | Opinionhttps://t.co/6deq5zCZad
— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) November 24, 2018

Mumbai Chabad Center Marking 10th Anniversary of 11/26 Attacks With Renaming Ceremony

Monday is the tenth anniversary of the Mumbai terror attacks, and the event is being marked with a renaming ceremony at the Chabad center that was one of the targets.

On November 26, 2008, ten terrorists from the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group entered Mumbai by sea and launched a coordinated gun-and-bomb assault on multiple sites in India’s most populous metropolis, killing 166 people — including six Jews at the Nariman House.

A decade after the carnage, the Chabad center is being renovated, and the fifth floor — where the murdered Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg lived with their two-year-old son Moshe (who survived the attack, thanks to the heroism of his nanny, Sandra Samuel) — is to be named the “Nariman Lighthouse” and serve as a memorial to the victims of the Mumbai attacks.

“We hope that viewing this will teach visitors the power of adding light,” Rabbi Israel Kozlovsky — the current head of the Nariman House — told Lubavitch.com. “We want to create waves of good that will spread until the whole world is filled with it.”

France gave 'sensitive' intel to Palestinians during Second Intifada

Former intelligence officer slams France’s “short-termist” policy to help militant groups for immediate securi

France worked closely with Palestinian Authority during the late 1990's and 2000's, including during the Second Intifada ("uprising") against Israel, providing training and delivering "sensitive intelligence" to the PA's security services, a former officer in the French secret service told i24NEWS on Wednesday.

Speaking with i24NEWS defense correspondent Mattias Inbar on his French-language weekly Defense program, Pierre Martinet said that “France, via its secret service, trained Palestinian agents in France” and that the French government delivered “sensitive materials to the Palestinian administration via the diplomatic bag”.

The diplomatic bag is an expression to describe a physical package that is used by a diplomatic mission to exchange correspondences with its home country. It cannot be officially scrutinized by another country’s border protection agencies and benefits from the same kind of diplomatic immunity as its owners.

The ‘bag’ can be anything, but is most often an actual suitcase.

"Unofficially we have collaborated with different [foreign] services, more notably with Palestine at different times. We worked with them on training and delivery of certain materials....through back-channel diplomacy," Martinet said.

British professor an unabashed fan of Hamas and its "poetry"

Check out this abstract of a paper published at the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication by Atef Alshaer, who lectures at the University of Westminster and who wrote this while at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London:

This article sheds light on poetry written by two of the most prominent leaders of Hamas, assassinated by Israel in 2003 and 2004, respectively: Ibrahim al-Maqadmah and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi. Both leaders took part in the creation of Hamas and propagated its ideology in political, cultural and other fields. Poetry, being the premier form of artistic expression in the Arab world, is used by the leaders of Hamas to present their experiences in Israeli prisons, and their vision and involvement in the Palestinian struggle. The sentiments that their poetry expresses, reveal deep and nuanced cultural, political and philosophical dimensions. The poetry of Hamas can be characterized as one of commitment, suffering, pain, longing, defiance, and certainty.

The paper is even worse, as Alshaer refers to the murderous leaders of Hamas as "intellectuals" who suffered a "cruel fate":

Al-Rantisi became the movement’s leader following the assassination of founder Ahmad Yasin by Israel in 2004, and was himself assassinated by Israel later that year. Ibrahim al-Maqadmah was also assassinated by Israel in 2003. Both had similar life experiences, and ultimately shared the same cruel fate, like many other Palestinian intellectuals.

See? Israel doesn't target Hamas terrorists who blow up buses and pizza shops with women and children - it targets Palestinian intellectuals!

The entire paper is filled with love of Hamas and denial of its violent nature. In this section, Alshaer claims that Rantisi only wants peace, a desire frustrated by Israel:

In these lines, al-Rantisi shows an existential paradox, wherein Palestinian lives have been disrupted and deprived of normality: on the one hand, there is the desire to live in peace and to see fulfillment of one’s needs and desires, and on the other, there are the forces which have rendered impossible the fulfillment of these needs and desires. Confronted by this dilemma, al-Rantisi chooses to resist injustice.

"Justice," of course, is the destruction of Israel.

Rantisi's poem urging his son to take up violence is interpreted romantically by Alshaer:

Better to die than to live as a coward… here you are rotting in a prison with no price/ tomorrow you die, and you will be buried/ O, pity on me, to whom you would leave your sons/ and the wife you will leave behind to wolves…I fear that you would be exiled tomorrow/ you would leave your house derelict; complain over the ruins/ you search for a trusted friend/ to cry for you or share the suffering with you…I forewarn you my son not to bow to an idol, not to return the sword to the sheath/ go in life as you like; I would not be satisfied with such a life without struggle.

This is a moving poem, clouded by paradoxes and occasional mysteries, such as when he fears that his wife would be left to wolves if he dies. Wolves are depicted as representing the ultimate danger; he understandably is racked with worry over the state of his wife and his sons if he is not to be with them. Here, the poet depicts himself as ‘the man, guardian, of the house’ who ensures the safety and security of his family. But finally, Al-Rantisi beckons his son not to give up: what is at stake deserves sacrifices; not doing so would be tantamount to surrendering to the forces that deny Palestinians a life of dignity and peace.

The keywords that Alshaer uses to describe this paper shows his romanticizing of the terror group:

poetry , Hamas , Arabic literature, Islamic poetry, prison, commitment, pain, defiance, hope and optimism

Alshaer, who clearly shares Hamas' philosophy, does admit that Hamas' poetry proves that Hamas is not interested in peace with Israel but in creating an Islamic state:

[W]ithin the grand scheme of Hamas’ ideology, an independent Palestinian state is only a stepping stone towards the realization of a larger Islamic polity that would encapsulate territories larger than Palestine, and ultimately culminates in an Islamic caliphate.

This guy is teaching swooning college students how wonderful Hamas is.

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In 2012, the ADL condemned Russia awarding the Pushkin Medal literary award to a Syrian writer, Ali Ukla Ursan, who had expressed antisemitic beliefs and supported the 9/11 terror attacks.

They quoted Ursan as saying "The covetous, racist and hated Jew Shylock who cut the flesh from Antonio's chest with the knife of hatred, invades you with his money, his modern airplanes, his missiles and his nuclear bombs."

Now Ursan has outdone himself in antisemitism. In a screed published in Al Watan, Ursan starts off with

It is not surprising that the Zionist racists are rooting and renewing their terrible crimes, ready to re-establish their criminal history, against the so-called "goyim," Christians and Muslims in particular. But the silence the world on all of this, this terrible racist crime, represented by the Israeli occupation of Palestine and its criminal practices, is surprising and insulting and condemnable.

Ursan eventually gets to his real point:

And "Bibi", located in the center of the celebration, participating in the anniversary of the end of the Great World War. For this occasion he celebrated the Nakba of innocent Palestinian Arab blood, to drink there...The Zionist racists are celebrating their religious feasts, where they make their unleavened bread on the high holidays, thoroughly soaked in the blood of the Goyim. The terrible incident that took place in the "Bab Touma" neighborhood of Damascus, is still in memory. On February 6, 1840, Eid al-Fitr, two innocent human members of the "Goyim = the Gentiles" Padre Tomasso, a Christian cleric and pharmacist, followed by Ibrahim Amara, were massacred by the people of the Bibi Netanyahu...On the evening of the festive day, on Sunday 11/11/2018 (Bibi celebrated) with the blood of "Goyim = Gentiles" of Muslims in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Baraka, and the Mujahideen al-Qassam Brigades: Muhammad Majid al-Qara, Alaa al-Din Fawzi Vseifis, Mahmoud Attallah Musbah, Mustafa Hassan Abu Odeh, Omar Naji Abu Khater and Khaled Muhammad Qweider from the Salah al-Din Brigades.

In a column last month Ursan describes "Zionists" (obviously meaning Jews) by saying "they have chosen to lie down in the ladder of human decay by disguising themselves as a common human being......They are racist killers, spoilers in the land through history..."

Just some everyday antisemitism in Arab media.

(h/t Alex)

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From Times of Israel:

The president of Chad, Idriss Déby, will visit Israel this week, an unprecedented trip for the leader of the Muslim-majority nation in Central Africa, which does not have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

His arrival was confirmed Sunday by state-owned media in Chad.

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem has in recent years intensified its contacts with various Muslim states in Africa, including Mali and Somalia.

Senior Israeli officials have recently traveled to N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, to prepare Déby’s visit to Israel and to prepare the ground for a possible renewal of diplomatic relations.

I only found the story in a single Chad news site so far, in Le Tchadanthropus-Tribune, which notes that Israel has provided security services for the country for years:

Credible sources say Idriss Déby will pay an official visit to Israel on Sunday, November 25, 2018. This will be first official visit since his coming to power, and the first since the break-up of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1968.

Israel has always been at the heart of the MPS security system... One can still recall the close cooperation in terms of listening and intelligence between technicians from the Jewish state and the ANS team at the time. Chad's political police (ANS) had benefited from sophisticated intelligence equipment to deal with Sudan and rebellions that coveted the presidential chair. Many observers still remember having heard on the Chadian radio exchanges between the current chief of intelligence Sudan Salah Gosh and officials of the Chadian rebellion. This interception of the communications was made thanks to the technical tools of the Israelis.

In addition, RAM armored vehicles and some of the current equipment of the presidential guard also come from Israel.

Today in the current context, many observers of the Chadian policy analyze this trip in relation to the current security situation in the country.

... Let's hope Déby does not say that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel to attract the good graces of Zionism ...

The presence of an advance team from Israel was noted in one other newspaper and greeted with suspicion:

About twenty Israeli citizens have been staying in Chad for a month; their arrival and stay are directly managed by Deby in person, even the ANS is not involved. With the direct involvement of Deby, speculation is high on their exact role; some think they would be in charge of Deby's personal safety, others argue they assist with wiretapping. The fact remains that Chadians have the right to know their true status... aid workers, or even mercenaries like the pilots of fighter jets paid for by the Chadian taxpayer?

This is yet another breathtaking diplomatic breakthrough by Netanyahu. Muslim-majority nations can no longer be expected to automatically adhere to the boycotting of Israel that occurred after 1967.

These diplomatic wins have a snowball effect. In the past, even if a Muslim-majority nation might have wanted to expand relations with Israel, they would have faced the prospect of being economically isolated by the Arab world. But now with Israeli officials openly visiting Gulf states that fear has evaporated; the Arab world's fracture over the one previously unifying stance about Israel has opened the floodgates for other nations to more openly look out for their own best interests.

The Arab and Muslim lockstep on being anti-Israel has ended, and the Palestinian leadership is panicking.

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11/24 Links: Glick: Hamas and Fatah unmasked; Hamas fears Israeli special forces operating base inside Gaza; Iran's great nuclear deception; Rouhani calls Israel a ‘cancerous tumor’ established by West

From Ian:

Hamas and Fatah unmasked

Abbas was similarly blindsided by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to Oman, and Minister of Culture and Sports Miri Regev’s visit to Abu Dhabi for the world judo championships.

The recent almost-war with Hamas taught us a lot about the terror regime. It also taught us a lot about Hamas’s rival, Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority it controls in Ramallah. Israel’s most urgent task is to understand the implications of what we now know.

The first thing we learned about Hamas is that its control over Gaza is all encompassing.

This week, the media published the communications between Hamas forces during their battle with IDF Special Forces in Gaza on November 11. From those communications we learned that Hamas forces detected the vehicle carrying the Israeli forces very quickly. While they didn’t know who was in the vehicle, they knew the vehicle was suspicious and dispatched a force to intercept it.

Hamas’s ability to detect the vehicle and act swiftly to intercept it demonstrated the terror regime’s ability to use both technological and physical assets to maintain its control over Gaza in a manner reminiscent of the Stasi in East Germany.

THE ALMOST-WAR with Hamas last week also taught us that contrary to the longstanding assessment of the IDF’s General Staff, Hamas is not at all interested in reaching a long-term ceasefire with Israel and therefore there is no point in trying to negotiate one.

For the past several months, various experts inside the Israeli government and military and in foreign countries have claimed that Hamas’s leadership in Gaza is split between two factions.

Top Historian Simon Schama: Remember the Expulsion of Jews From Arab Countries

Prominent historian Simon Schama on Friday called for commemorating the expulsion of over 800,000 Jews from Arab countries that followed the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

“This is so important — 800,000 Jewish refugees — When exactly next week is the day of commemoration of THEIR naqba?” Schama asked, using the Arabic word for “catastrophe” commonly used to describe the experience of Arab refugees during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

Schama’s acclaimed recent book and TV series, “A History of the Jews,” includes a detailed account of the uprooting of Jewish communities from North Africa to Yemen, in which he contrasts the silence around this question with the attention given to the Palestinian issue.

November 30 — a week from today — is marked in Israel as an official commemoration of the expulsion of the Jews from the Arab countries and, later, from Iran. It falls, symbolically, one day after the anniversary of the UN resolution in favor of partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, which is officially commemorated by the UN as an “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”

The November 30 commemoration in Israel has been held since 2014, when it was formally established in legislation passed by the Knesset.

Many Jewish organizations in the US and around the world also remember the expulsions on the same day.

Jewish leaders call for new editions of the Bible and the Koran to carry trigger warnings highlighting anti-Semitic passages

Jewish leaders are calling for new editions of the Bible and Koran to carry warning messages which highlight anti-Semitic passages in the holy texts.

The recommendations have been made in a new document called ‘An End to Antisemitism! A Catalogue of Policies to Combat Antisemitism’.

It was produced following an international conference organised by the European Jewish Congress, at which academics gathered to discuss how prejudice and discrimination can be tackled.

Among the policies mentioned in the document was the idea of warning messages in holy texts, a topic discussed in a chapter entitled 'recommendations regarding Religious Groups and Institutions'.

The document reads: 'Translations of the New Testament, the Qur’an and other Christian or Muslim literatures need marginal glosses, and introductions that emphasize continuity with Jewish heritage of both Christianity and Islam and warn readers about antisemitic passages in them.

'While some efforts have been made in this direction in the case of Christianity, these efforts need to be extended and made consistent in both religions.' (h/t jzaik)

Islamic Jihad celebrates female terrorists (video)

Here's a video of Islamic Jihad female terrorists learning how to use guns. Most of them are using wooden replicas of guns, but some are actually shooting. The video is interspersed with photos of female "martyr" heroes who have blown up and stabbed Jews.

It is a sick society that produces, promotes and condones stuff like this.

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11/23 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Israel shows the West the real source of national resilience; From Family to Foe: Haniyeh’s Betrayal of Israeli “Family”; Putting Jewish Refugees from Arab States on the Global Agenda

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Israel shows the West the real source of national resilience

National identity was replaced by factional interest groups. Morality was replaced by a Marxist view of the world based on competing power blocs. Biblical morality was replaced by man-made, universalizing ideologies, such as moral and cultural relativism or multiculturalism.

Above all, the Western nation could never defend itself by force. Every conflict had to be resolved through negotiation, compromise and peace processes – even with non-negotiable, genocidal agendas. Hence the terrible Iran nuclear deal, and the reframing altogether of the Arab war of extermination against Israel as a conflict between two rival claims to the land.

In the Western progressive mind, therefore, Israel is damned many times over: as a (supposedly) Western, ethnic nation that defends itself with force.

Perhaps even more enraging to the Left than that, the ancient kingdom of Israel was the original paradigm nation, on which at some level America and Britain modeled themselves.

The current resurgence of antisemitism in the West is part of a far deeper and wider struggle. It’s a fight between two views of the world and of humanity itself. A fight over how we should live in this world, what it means to be moral and what it means to be human. And Jews are on both sides in this great battle.

But if the West is ever to learn to love the Jewish people and their nation in Israel, it will first have to learn to love again the Western nation itself.

Douglas Murray: Does America oppose female genital mutilation – or not?

Twenty years ago almost no one in the West had heard of Female Genital Mutilation. Then in the 2000s, thanks to a few brave and vocal campaigners like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, knowledge of this barbaric practice began to spread.

Originally there was some queasiness about taking up the subject at all. Lawmakers and opinion formers took a while to work out their line. There was an early question mark over whether FGM wasn’t just the same as male circumcision. Most people swiftly learned that the difference was, gynaecologically speaking, almost everything. There were some hold-outs among people who thought that since FGM was practiced among Muslims there might be something ‘Islamophobic’ about objecting to the mutilation of young girls’ genitals with knives. On such fine judgement calls (‘child mutilation’ vs the suspicion of prejudice?) is the modern liberal conscience formed.

Eventually by this decade most countries in the West had settled on a consensus that FGM was wrong. Although the question of exactly what to do about it remained.

In the UK, a law banning the practice has actually been on the books for three decades. Yet to date only a handful of people have been charged with the offence and there has not been a single successful prosecution. Some of the reasons are understandable. Collecting evidence in such cases is difficult, and it often relies on children giving evidence about someone close to them. Nevertheless there is a huge question mark over the whole matter. If thousands of girls are being tortured and mutilated in your country every year why would the state not move heaven and earth to bring all those responsible to justice?

Putting Jewish Refugees from Arab States on the Global Agenda

Do you know what we commemorate on November 30?

Sadly, for most Israelis and Jews around the world, it is just another day. However, according to a law passed in 2014 by Knesset member Dr. Shimon Ohayon, November 30 is now the official day of commemoration for Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

It should be an important day on the official global Jewish calendar, because the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa are an essential part of Jewish history, even for those of us who did not come from there.

One of the issues I was able and proud to raise during my time in government was the ethnic cleansing of almost a million Jews from the Middle East and North Africa — communities massively predating Islam and the Arab conquest of the region in the seventh century — and the appropriation of their assets, estimated in today’s prices to be many billions of dollars.

Unfortunately, this history — the forced exodus of Jews who, along with their descendants, constitute the majority of Jews in Israel — is barely studied, mostly ignored, and seemingly of little interest to the general population and Diaspora Jewry.

Apart from the great work of organizations like Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, and Harif, I was amazed that the issue had only seldom been raised in any meaningful way around the world.

Growing up in a thriving Jewish community, attending a Jewish school, and being involved in the Jewish community and Zionist organizations, I am astounded now, thinking back, how little was taught about the long and illustrious history of the Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa, and their subsequent expulsion.

Interactive version of The Official EoZ Intersectionality Victimhood Calculator

I recently unveiled an algorithm to determine what people or groups of people have the highest "victimhood" scores, which in today's environment means that those with higher scores are automatically considered more righteous than those with lower scores. Read there for details on how it works.

Thanks to L. King, I can now present an interactive version of the calculator, where you simply check off the categories that apply to whoever you want to rank and it will calculate the total!

The Official EoZ Online Intersectionality Victimhood Calculator (version 1.0)

Attribute	Victimhood Score
Trans	8
Black	8
First Nations	7
Woman	6
Gay	6
Muslim	5
Arab or other Middle Eastern	5
Hispanic	4
Disabled, pregnant	4
Anti-Zionist Jew	4
Wears hijab	2
Palestinian	2
Asian American	1
White	-1
Republican or conservative	-3
Christian (white only)	-3
Jew	-3
Visibly religious Jew	-3
Jewish settler	-6
Identifies proudly as Zionist	-8
Trump Supporter	-8
White nationalist/new Nazi	-18

Total score:

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.